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Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com

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Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#191

Post by pjmlp »

headsoup wrote: post #103
dfox wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both nouveau and amdgpu are good enough for every linux game in my steam library.

Same here, except all the newer games I probably would like to add to my library but can't because Win/DX only... Nouveau is still problematic because of the lack of access to the NVIDIA proprietary code, i.e. the extra bits like fan management, monitors, etc. That and it's performance still just isn't there against the proprietary drivers. AMD drivers are pretty good and Wine performance has increased significantly…

Just like they are locked into every games console ever built and are completely fine with that.

The gamer culture is not the same as FOSS one, cool games, getting hold of IP and belonging to a specific tribe (e.g. PS owners) is more relevant than freedom of games.

Currently Vulkan only matters on Linux and flagship Android devices.

It remains to be seen if Microsoft will ever allow ICD drivers on the Store or what is the actual use of Vulkan vs NVN on the Switch.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#192

Post by pjmlp »

tomovo wrote: post #43

Anyone remembers Intel's Larrabee project? It featured HW accelerated raytracing. They had Quake Wars running on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Wars:_Ray_Traced or video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtHDSG2wNho

Yes, I was seated at GDCE 2009 Intel session where they told us that Larrabee would be the future of graphics programming, yeah right.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#193

Post by pjmlp »

headsoup wrote: post #115
thelittleone wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is the dominant platform for games. What financial gain would they derive from pursuing a non lock in strategy?

Sometimes I just wish Valve* would pop up and announce: 'oh so HL3 is coming out soon, and it will be a Steam Linux exclusive for the first 6 months.' While not likely, something like that would be a really interesting gauge of how likely genuine Linux adoption could be... * I use Valve due to their apparent Linux push with SteamOS (what's the go with that btw!?)

Good luck keeping their business alive with those 1% Linux buyers.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#194

Post by pjmlp »

swebs wrote: post #183
romanovcode wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are not Linux fanatics like you. 99.9% of people do not care to use Windows as long as it works.

According to the Stack Overflow developer survey, the percent of developers using Windows dropped below 50%. Nobody actually likes using Windows (except for a few Stockholm syndrome sufferers and zealots who drink the MSDN kool-aid), it's just that people are forced to use it due to third-party application support like video games. It seems like every week there's a new article on how Windows 10 is shit for users, wh…

Sorry to disappoint you, but as developer with Stockholm syndrome that left Linux back for Visual Studio, C++ and .NET.

Also former IGDA member and attendee of a few GDC conferences, game developers only care about shipping games and their IP.

AAA studios don't care 1 second about APIs to make a better world.

Adding a new rendering backend to a games engine is a trivial task, when compared to the pile of features a game engine needs to support.

Also most Windows developers don't care about Stack Overflow surveys.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#195

Post by pjmlp »

swebs wrote: post #108
thelittleone wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is the dominant platform for games. What financial gain would they derive from pursuing a non lock in strategy?

What would Microsoft have to gain? Absolutely nothing. What do consumers gain. A hell of a lot. That's why it's foolish to assume Microsoft will change their ways somewhere down the line. The point is that it is us , the users that should be choosing alternatives and not celebrating vendor lock-in.

The same as Apple, Sony and Nintendo. I guess.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#196

Post by pzone »

pixel_fcker wrote: post #81
bhouston wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that PBR is awesome, but PBR doesn't slow things down, it is just a replacement by less accurate equations (BlinnPhong ambient,diffuse,specular) with better equations (GGX albeido, roughness, metallic, clearcoat, sheen) that are generally the same complexity. It is sort of neutral on render time for the most part. In time, I am sure we will be in a raytraced future if GPU trends continue.

Physically based rendering is _not_ the Disney shader and renaming your diffuse maps to albedo because it sounds more sciencey. It’s about the wholesale switch to a fully path-traced framework with a consistent mathematical foundation as opposed to the layered system of hacks and chained prepasses that prevailed in the early 2000’s

That's not really what it's about! It's not about achieving physical correctness or ray tracing. You can have a PBR renderer selectively break energy conservation for artistic reasons. It's not about ray tracing either. Current game engines like Unreal and Unity are considered PBR because they use a roughness/metalness workflow.

PBR about having maps that are easy to understand through physical analogy, and simplifying the workflow so that it's mostly shared across render engines, applications and pipelines. It's about the ability to create texture in Mari or Substance, which use rasterizing engines, and seeing the final render in Arnold look nearly identical.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#197

Post by shmerl »

pjmlp wrote: post #194
swebs wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Stack Overflow developer survey, the percent of developers using Windows dropped below 50%. Nobody actually likes using Windows (except for a few Stockholm syndrome sufferers and zealots who drink the MSDN kool-aid), it's just that people are forced to use it due to third-party application support like video games. It seems like every week there's a new article on how Windows 10 is shit for users, wh…

Sorry to disappoint you, but as developer with Stockholm syndrome that left Linux back for Visual Studio, C++ and .NET. Also former IGDA member and attendee of a few GDC conferences, game developers only care about shipping games and their IP. AAA studios don't care 1 second about APIs to make a better world. Adding a new rendering backend to a games engine is a trivial task, when compared to the pile of features a g…

> Adding a new rendering backend to a games engine is a trivial task

You keep saying this, but it remains false. If it would have been so trivial, studios wouldn't have hard time adding such backends and wouldn't need to hire third party porting experts when they decide to do it. You can see how long it takes major engines like Unreal to make a fully functional backend (since features added to such engines are publicly communicated). It's very clear it's not trivial at all.

And MS and Co. obviously do all they can to keep this difficult, that's the main idea of their lock-in which they designed to tax developers with.

What's bad though, is your justification of this practice.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#198

Post by pzone »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #95
pixel_fcker wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physically based rendering is _not_ the Disney shader and renaming your diffuse maps to albedo because it sounds more sciencey. It’s about the wholesale switch to a fully path-traced framework with a consistent mathematical foundation as opposed to the layered system of hacks and chained prepasses that prevailed in the early 2000’s

This. You can use PBR concepts in an old school renderman style pipeline, but that's not why it's been a big deal in VFX. With a PBRT style renderer, everything is handled in a single monte carlo framework. And once you get an unbiased renderer that meets your standards, you can implement schemes like irradiance caching or photon mapping that introduce bias, but greatly accelerate rendering (and reduce noise). That o…

Actually PBR is quite a very important workflow innovation in rasterizing engines, see my post above!

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#199

Post by psandersen »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #95
pixel_fcker wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physically based rendering is _not_ the Disney shader and renaming your diffuse maps to albedo because it sounds more sciencey. It’s about the wholesale switch to a fully path-traced framework with a consistent mathematical foundation as opposed to the layered system of hacks and chained prepasses that prevailed in the early 2000’s

This. You can use PBR concepts in an old school renderman style pipeline, but that's not why it's been a big deal in VFX. With a PBRT style renderer, everything is handled in a single monte carlo framework. And once you get an unbiased renderer that meets your standards, you can implement schemes like irradiance caching or photon mapping that introduce bias, but greatly accelerate rendering (and reduce noise). That o…

Worth adding that if we get more hardware support for deep neural networks on the GPU (e.g. tensor cores), training a denoising DNN on the noisy renders can save a lot of computation and fits neatly into the pipeline.

If the ray tracing can be done at or around 1 ray per pixel or less using a network trained to do merge information over multiple frames and upscale we could probably get away with less. Maybe more if we can feed in a depth map, velocity map and a flat shader less rendering or other information to help guide the DNN.

Might even end up faster than current raster renders.

See https://www.chaosgroup.com/blog/experiments-with-v-ray-next-...

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#200

Post by pjmlp »

shmerl wrote: post #197
pjmlp wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to disappoint you, but as developer with Stockholm syndrome that left Linux back for Visual Studio, C++ and .NET. Also former IGDA member and attendee of a few GDC conferences, game developers only care about shipping games and their IP. AAA studios don't care 1 second about APIs to make a better world. Adding a new rendering backend to a games engine is a trivial task, when compared to the pile of features a g…

> Adding a new rendering backend to a games engine is a trivial task You keep saying this, but it remains false. If it would have been so trivial, studios wouldn't have hard time adding such backends and wouldn't need to hire third party porting experts when they decide to do it. You can see how long it takes major engines like Unreal to make a fully functional backend (since features added to such engines are public…

And you keep not understanding how game's industry works.

Make yourself an IGDA member, attend GDC, go to Independent Games Festival, network with people there and see how many would actually share your opinion.

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